by Henry Guy, member of Parliament for Heydon and Secretary of the
Treasury. Guy was instantly sent to the Tower, not without much
exultation on the part of the Whigs; for he was one of those tools who
had passed, together with the buildings and furniture of the public
offices, from James to William; he affected the character of a High
Churchman; and he was known to be closely connected with some of the
heads of the Tory party, and especially with Trevor. [567]

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated, first
became known to the public at this time. James Craggs had begun life as
a barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess of Cleveland. His
abilities, eminently vigorous though not improved by education, had
raised him in the world; and he was now entering on a career which
was destined to end, after a quarter of a century of prosperity, in
unutterable misery and despair. He had become an army clothier. He was
examined as to his dealings with the colonels of regiments; and, as
he obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guy
company in the Tower. [568]

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a committee, which
had been appointed to inquire into the truth of a petition signed by
some of the hackney coachmen of London, laid on the table of the House a
report which excited universal disgust and indignation. It appeared that
these poor hardworking men had been cruelly wronged by the board under
the authority of which an Act of the preceding session had placed them.
They had been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, but
by one commissioner's lacquey and by another commissioner's harlot. The
Commons addressed the King; and the King turned the delinquents out of
their places. [569]

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were beginning
to be uneasy. At every new detection, the excitement, both within and
without the walls of Parliament, became more intense. The frightful
prevalence of bribery, corruption and extortion was every where the
subject of conversation. A contemporary pamphleteer compares the state
of the political world at this conjuncture to the state of a city in
which the plague has just been discovered, and in which the terrible
words, "Lord have mercy on us," are already seen on some doors. [570]
Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and been
forgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and